Many buildings include textual notification devices for displaying information in the form of text messages. The textual notification devices are used to display information to occupants of the building. For example, university buildings often include textual notification devices for displaying information on school activities to students. In another example, restaurant buildings include textual notification devices for displaying information on food specials and local news to customers.
Some buildings include emergency systems. Emergency systems are used to monitor emergency conditions (e.g., fire, robbery, gas leak, etc.) for the building. The emergency systems alert occupants of a particular emergency based on monitoring of the emergency conditions. Emergency systems typically include an emergency panel, initiation devices, and standard notification devices connected to one another via an emergency network. For example, the emergency panel monitors an emergency condition (e.g., fire) by using the initiation device (e.g., smoke detector). The emergency panel responds to the emergency condition (e.g., fire) by activating the notification device (e.g., activating an audio alert generator).
Some emergency systems include textual notification devices connected to the emergency network. These textual notification devices are used to present emergency information (e.g., fire alert or gas alert). These devices are especially critical when there is a need to notify the hearing-impaired.
These textual notification devices can also provide non-emergency information (e.g., school activities, food specials, local news, etc.) as described above so long an emergency information override feature is included. The textual notification devices use the emergency information override feature to override the presentation of non-emergency information when emergency information is received.